OK, so Day 2 in London has been much much better. The Sister and I have adapted to London pretty fast. On the first day we were kind of lost. We had no idea how to use the public transportation system, which places served good food (and ended up eating in a horrible place called Garfunkel’s that turned out to be a chain for tourists), which areas should be visited, and how much anything was supposed to cost.

Today, however, we did much better. We used buses masterfully, getting exactly where we wanted to. I finally fulfilled a long-standing dream and bought myself a real Cornish pasty. Also, I got many different British soaps because I have this strange addiction to good soaps and I remember from my visit in 1990 that English soaps are the best in the world. They smell too good for words.

We found a very good restaurant with a veranda in a quiet little street. They served real jamon serrano there. In North America, when you order jamon serrano, you get something more like Canadian honey glazed ham, which is great in its own right but has nothing to do with the Iberian jamon. The sister ordered a lamb chop with peas and mint sauce. This is a dish nobody should leave the country without trying, in my opinion.

The Sister has a 2,5-year-old daughter, my niece Klubnikis, so we visited Hammel’s, a huge toy store. I dread American toy stores because they are normally very boring. However, in this toy store, instead of rows upon rows of scary-looking Barbies, they had such amazing, educational, creative toys that we bought enough for all of Klubnikis’s little friends.

We also stopped looking completely out of place, and people with British accents asked us for directions on three separate occasions. And on two of those occasions we were actually capable of helping them.

Tomorrow we are going to Berlin, and it feels very strange to go to Berlin on May 9. I’ve never been in Germany before but The Sister has. She tells me that when she was travelling in Germany a few years ago, she kept having flashbacks of tanks moving down the roads. The collective memory of what we call the Great Patriotic War is very strong among us. Our grandfather on our mother’s side was in the war. He marched all the way to the Reichstag and wrote our last name on its walls.

I wouldn’t have minded staying in London longer. Just as we started to feel comfortable in the city, we have to leave.

I keep having this feeling that, unlike many other European cities, London is not trying to preserve its uniqueness. The beautiful old historic buildings are not being restored and maintained as well as they deserve. And ugly new buildings are crowding them everywhere. It was already like this, in a way, 22 years ago but now this trend is even more pronounced.

The Sister has a theory that the British have decided to direct their efforts to preserve the country’s uniqueness towards supporting and promoting the endless melodrama of the Royal Family, which is why neither resources nor any real interest are left for the preservation of the face of their capital. I’m not sure I have an opinion just yet.

Tomorrow we are going to Berlin, so I will be able to compare Berlin to London.

I just discovered that the word “Maidan ” means the exact same thing in India and in Ukraine.  In Russian, this word doesn’t exist, just in Ukrainian.  How fascinating is that?

I’m a philologist, so I’m aware if Indo-European languages but, still, it’s strange to see a word that is used exactly the same in such different countries.

1. The coffee is very good. This isn’t even Spain or Portugal, but already the coffee is so much better than in North America that I feel copletely in Europe.

2. Since the last time I visited, the aggravating yet quaint British faucets are gone. Now, there are regular faucets like you see everywhere else in the world have been installed. Is it like this in people’s homes, too?

3. Once again, the city is very expensive. How do the British people live here? I haven’t been to a grocery store yet, so I don’t know how much the food costs, but everything else is just ruinous.

4. The Indian food is, indeed, amazing. Even at a very small out-of-the-way restaurant, we found Indian food that is far superior to any I have eaten in North America with the possible exception of one place in Lafayette, IN.

5. I’m glad that I wasn’t planning to buy any clothes because even though there are some really beautiful things in stores, everything is in tiny little sizes. I keep wondering if I’m at a store for little girls because most of the clothes do not have the physique of an adult woman in mind.

6. I’ve gotten very provincial because the crowds of people in the street feel very unusual to me.

7. London is truly becoming a Russian-speaking city because there are more Russian-speakers here than even in New York. I now have to watch what I say, which I’m not used to doing after 14 years of living in countries where nobody understands me.

I’m blogging from the hotel computer, so I can’t post any photos. But I promise that photos are upcoming.

Twenty -two years after my last visit, I’m back in London. I have to say that it has changed a lot. I’m still struggling to get a feel on the city but after a full day of walking around (Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square, Westminster, Knightsbridge, Oxford Street, Paddington), I still haven’t managed to do that. For the most part, I have to keep reminding myself that I’m not in New York. And I’m not a huge fan of New York anyway.

Also, I can’t seem to find a bookstore anywhere. All I find are Gaps and Zaras that I can’t stand at home either.

But of course the Houses of Parliament and the Westminster Abbey are sublime. The Millennium Wheel is a little incongruous.

I keep almost being run over by traffic because I keep forgetting what direction the cars come from. The British accent is so sophisticated that I feel very dowdy with my Midwestern pronunciation.

Now we are planning to find a good Indian restaurant. There have got to be many around Paddington, right?

Can anybody decipher the following Obama ad for me?

Tell Barack you are in. . . what, exactly? And where should we join Michelle? In voting for Obama? With all due respect, why should anybody be influenced by Michelle Obama’s decision to vote for her own husband?

This isn’t the first time that I’m getting the feeling that Obama is trying hard not to win this election.

The good news is that his opponent is fighting for the same goal even harder. Look at a similar ad by Romney’s campaign:

I mean, if she is so much better than Romney that we are asked to stand with her and not with him, then maybe we should just go ahead and vote for her instead?

This trip to Europe better be worth it, people, because it was an adventure of rare proportions to get into this airplane to London. The adventure included:

1. An unpleasant airline person at Lambert Airport refusing to let me board because “you will miss the connecting flight anyways.”

2. The need to phone customer assistance and the immediate autistic unraveling.

3. 5 flight delays.

4. A race across Chicago O’Hare with the grace of a wounded hippopotamus.

5. Getting to the plane right at that moment when the flight attendant starts to close the door.

In the end, however, a reward awaited me: I got one of those great seats on the long flight to London which is like Business Class without being Business Class. I was afraid I’d have to sit squeezed between strangers but, I sit in the aisle and the seat next to me is empty. So I don’t have to have strangers next to me at all. And the bathroom is very close.

I have V.S. Naipaul’s The Writer and the World with me, and what is more relaxing than Naipaul’ writing?

What makes Americans annoying. For another take on the same issue, read the discussion in my Magnitsky Bill thread. It’s good because you see both the annoying Americans and the ones who are as horrified with the annoying Messianic ones as I am. OK, I won’t promote my own blog here any more because that’s weird.

“For a writer, happiness is knowing that tomorrow you will write. Happiness does not follow automatically from writing, nor from a vague hope that you will write, which is too easily undermined by the equally vague worry that you will not. You must simply know that you will write and whatyou will write.”

In defense of uselessness.

A very insightful addition to my posts on narcissism. Highly recommended.

I never heard of positive parenting before but this is a beautiful post from a person who sounds like an amazing mother. Her little girl is very lucky to have her.

“When you feel “irritated”, “aggravated” and “disheartened” in your job and your only motivators are “economic gratification”, “potential income”, “commission obtained with placements”, or a “generous check from your client”, it sounds truly unfortunate. Who in their right mind would want to be part of a field that is reduced to something this shallow?”

“There are no pogroms, but if there were, it would be because the Jews deserved it!”

“Having Asperger’s or Autism can be hard. It can be painful. It can be downright depressing. When I was growing up, I didn’t know I was autistic. I just thought there was something wrong with me. That I wasn’t trying hard enough, and that if I just could do better and work harder, the other kids would like me and be nice to me. I thought that my parents would stop abusing me. I wished that I could be just like everybody else, and wished that things would be better. I wished that I could just be like everyone else.” I want to join this talented and passionate blogger in saying that it does get better. It really does. Ours is a uniqueness that comes at a price.

The sentence that marks the death of traditional American journalism. It’s just one sentence (it’s marked off in the middle of the post I link to). Read it and recognize that, even though I blog for free, I would never inflict something like that upon my readers.

How the modesty doctrine hurts men.

Anti-intellectualism at the Chronicle of Higher Ed. A very good post.

Why was Shylock named Shylock?

Does Simon Fraser University in Canada need a Men’s Center? An interesting article and very enlightening comments that follow it.

“Your right to worship as you see fit does not include the right to be kowtowed to, the right to make other people live by your rules, or even the right not to be offended. Put on your big-boy pants and deal with it.” Yes.

On sympathy for Obama. I’m not sure how much I agree with the following but it offers great food for thought: “I’m not saying that Obama didn’t make mistakes or that he shouldn’t have tried for more. In fact, there are areas where he basically has a free hand that he’s done terribly at — I’m appalled at the drone warfare and the “war on terror” claims of executive power, and they seem to have actively undermined the effort to bring relief to underwater mortgages. But it seems to me that the kind of counterfactuals that people are gaming out basically would’ve required either a constitutional convention or a radical reworking of what an American political party is — or a coup.” This is great blogger, people. I recommend.

A very funny short post about student writing.

And the post of the week: I’m leaving for Europe, so I can’t report in detail on the situation with student protests in Quebec. This blogger, however, is giving detailed updates on the situation. It seems like the student protests have achieved a limited victory. This is great news, people. I’m proud that the students of my province did not knuckle down under the pressure from the corrupt and unpopular government.

An experienced senior colleague and I are talking about University X.

“That place is horrible,” I tell my colleague. “It’s a regular dump.”

“What makes you think that?” the colleague asks me.

“I’ve been talking to people who work at that university,” I explain, “and they say it’s a horrible place. They are exploited and unappreciated in all kinds of ways.”

The senior colleague looks at me with compassion.

“Did they also tell you that their teaching loads are 1.5 times lighter than ours and their salaries are significantly higher?” he asks.

“Really?” I say. “But then why do they complain so much?”

“Whining is what we as academics do,” the colleague explains patiently. “We pretend to be miserable so that nobody realizes how great we have it and tries to take it away.”

“But ours is the best kind of job ever,” I say.

“I know,” the colleague smiles. “But shhh. . .”

. . . is that they are incapable of recognizing which genre is appropriate to which occasion.

At our Graduation Ceremony today, our alumna who recently received the Pulitzer Prize for her achievements in investigative journalism was giving a speech.

“Out of each 4 of you,” she said, addressing our graduates, “2 will find jobs in your chosen field, 1 will find an unqualified job where your degree will be of no use, and 1 will remain unemployed and will have to return to Mom’s and Dad’s basement.”

We awaited some sort of a punch line but it never came. I can just imagine how this journalist toasts people at their weddings by reciting them the statistics on divorce.

As an investigative journalist, she probably forgot that not every occasion calls for sad revelations and unpleasant statistics.